chapter 7: conclusion

Burning the candle at both ends, dousing it in kerosene and then taking to it with a blowtorch helped me sail past the deadline only 24-hours late. My thesis draft (beta2, 'MC-Hammer' edition, for those that take an interest) has been sent to the supervisor-A for reviewing and editing. That will come back to me, endure a few days of fairly heavy fixing and corrections, and will be bundled off overseas and locally for final assessment before the end of the month (this will be beta3, 'Fresh-Prince' edition).

In Australia, unusually, there is no PhD defence process - you write your thesis, and it's sent off for review overseas. A few months later, it comes back with requests for corrections, and then you can go and wear the silly hat for graduation (I'm going to keep that hat, probably nailed above the doorframe of the lavatory of whichever house we finally end up getting).

The most tedious part of my PhD work is now well behind me, and I'm slowly resuming normal life. I can't quite describe how it is not having that nagging feeling in the back of your mind all the time, telling you that you should be running an experiment, or writing up. I don't think I'll be able to fully count it as 100% over until I send my final version in, but it's extremely close and I'm sufficiently unwound now to enjoy life. Five years is an awfully long time to have been doing anything, and with this whole combined working and PhD thing, I seem to have been doing a bit of everything. It's good to be done.